Sea of Silver Light o-4

by Tad Williams

  Renie gasped and took a few backward steps. This was a crazy place, she told herself: anything was possible, therefore nothing should be surprising. "Did you say something?" she asked.

  The bird changed its position again and piped, "Didn't think I would." An instant later it sprang into the air in a tiny explosion of rainbow light, then flew off across the river.

  Renie had only a moment to decide. She looked at the wisp of white cloth bobbing on the branch, then back down the valley, a world of glass frozen in eternal twilight. She ran in pursuit of the bird, a speck now against the inconstant sky.

  She found a shallow place and splashed across the river. As she reached the farther bank she noticed that the light had shifted in a subtle way. The environment had suddenly grown quite solid, as though she had passed through some kind of barrier that held the pressure of reality firmly in place, but that was the least of the distractions. The new world around her was so strange that she could scarcely keep the flitting bird in view.

  Rolling hills and meadows had given way to a landscape of folds and peaks, as though some great upheaval had shoved the substance of the earth together into gigantic wrinkles. The terrain was rough and rocky, the vegetation reduced to tangles of wind-twisted pines and rugged shrubbery cloaked in mist. The burgeoning sunshine was lost now behind thick overcast, so that even though the world had grown more substantial, it was not a great deal more colorful.

  She paused at the top of a rise, panting, watching the bird's flight. Her quarry had grown more solid, too, although at this distance she could make out little of its color. It alighted on a twisted pine branch hundreds of meters below her down the hillside. Its voice floated up, saying ". . . I would . . . I would. . . ." softly and regretfully as a tired child.

  The track down between two ragged outcroppings was steep, but Renie had run too hard and too long to turn back. This was the first voice other than her friends' that she had heard since the mountain had disappeared, the first new living thing that she had encountered.

  As she made her way down the hill the bird sat placidly on the branch as though waiting for her. The mists eddied in a slow but surprisingly chill breeze—she was discovering that not all aspects of returning reality were equally welcome—and she thought she could detect hidden forms built into the curves of land, odd, almost humanoid shapes like vast bodies underneath the soil. It was hard to tell in thin light and mist, but it reminded her uncomfortably of the monstrous figure of the Other that had greeted them on the mountaintop. She shivered and brought her attention firmly back to the rocky soil beneath her feet.

  The bird tipped its head to watch her awkward approach. It had color and shape now, a bundle of reddish-brown feathers with a bright black eye, but there was still something unusual about it, something not quite complete.

  "Didn't think I would ever get there," the bird said suddenly.

  "Get where?" Renie asked. "Who are you? What is this place?"

  "We walked for a long time," the bird chirped sadly. "Didn't think I would ever. . . ." It suddenly stood and fluttered its wings as if about to fly. Renie's heart sank, but the bird merely settled back on the branch. "Didn't think I would ever get there," it observed again. "Mama said it would take a while. We walked for a long time,"

  "Walked where? Can you talk to me? Hello?" Renie took a slow step closer and lowered her voice. "I don't mean you any harm. Please talk to me."

  The bird looked at her again, then suddenly leaped from the branch and flashed away down the hillside. "Didn't think I would. . . ." it called shrilly before it disappeared into the mist.

  "Jesus Mercy!" Renie sank down onto the stony ground, close to tears. She had traded a place beside the ghost-river for nothing except an exhausting run and a cold, foggy hillside; she would need a long rest before she could manage the climb back up. "Jesus Mercy."

  It was only when her chin bumped against her chest and she jerked her head upright that she realized she had fallen asleep—whether for seconds or minutes, she could not tell, but the misty landscape seemed distinctly darker now, the shadows deeper in the folds of the hillside, sky shaded from pearl to a stormy gray. Renie staggered to her feet, keenly aware of the chilly winds ranging the slope and of her own skimpy clothing. She shivered, cursing quietly but miserably at the thought of spending a night in the open. She and her companions had been spoiled by the room-temperature ambience of the unfinished land.

  She clambered a short way back up the hill, then stood to have a look around before the light began to fail. The fog that clung to the ground had mounted higher. Her friends could have passed only a stone's throw away while she slept without noticing her.

  When she turned her head, she thought she could hear the river not too far away, invisible in some fold of the hill. She began to move sideways along the hillside toward the sound, leaning into the angle of the slope as her feet searched for solid earth. She could at least be grateful, since she had no shoes, that the hill was more soft dirt than sharp stones.

  The river remained elusive. In fact, she couldn't see anything that looked like the low, rolling country she had just left.

  Lost. And it's getting dark fast.

  She had paused to catch her breath on a shelf of rock when she heard the strange sound. The wind had died, but a thin howl still skirled along the hilltop above her, a kind of drawn-out bubbling whistle. The skin at the back of Renie's neck tightened. When a second wailing noise arose from a spot ahead of her and distinctly farther down the slope, her unease curdled into fear. The first voice seemed to hear it and reply, keening and gobbling like some sort of underwater hyena, and Renie's heart stuttered in her chest.

  There was no time to analyze—she knew only that she did not want to be caught between whatever these two things were. She turned and scrambled back across the hillside, missing footholds in the diminishing light so that twice she came very close to a long and perhaps mortal fall.

  Just move, keep moving. . . . She had a strange and inexplicable certainty that whatever entities moaned along the slopes above and behind her were not just making noise for its own sake, but were hunting for . . . something. For Renie herself, if she was extremely unlucky. Or perhaps for anything warm that moved, which wasn't a lot better.

  The chill wind numbed her skin, enabling her to ignore the countless scratches and bumps of her awkward clamber, but she could feel the cold sucking the strength out of her as well and knew she could not keep up such a pace for long. The cry of the thing on the hilltop seemed farther away now, but the answering moan was at least as loud as before if not louder; Renie chanced a look back and then wished she hadn't. Something pale was moving along the hillside as though following her tracks.

  Barely visible through the murk, it flapped and billowed like a man in a bedsheet, but seemed larger than that and much more terrifyingly alien. Unstable shadows moved across its ghostly surface—a horrible suggestion of a face, swimming in and out of focus. As she stared, transfixed, a dark uneven hole opened in the middle of the features to emit the mournful, bubbling cry. As the thing on top of the hill responded, farther away but not by any means far enough for her to head upslope, Renie bolted forward along the hillside, sacrificing caution for speed. The sound of the pursuers filled her with icy dread. Anything, even tumbling to her death down the hill, would be better than being caught by such pale, formless things.

  She nearly got her wish when she plunged her foot through a mat of fallen branches that she thought was solid ground. She lost her balance, swung her arms for a moment, then fell and began to roll. Only sheer luck saved her—a tree, bent almost double by years of wind and gnarled as an old man's hand, stood right in her path. As she freed herself from the tangling branches, scratched bloody in a dozen places, another throbbing cry floated up, but it sounded more distant now.

  A moment's fierce joy at the idea that she had rolled so far down was suddenly dashed when she realized that this noise came from below her—a third hunter. In confirmation, two
more calls echoed from the slope above her head, rising in pitch as though they sensed the end of their run, their quarry's failing strength.

  Renie crouched, gasping shallowly, full of useless, terrified thoughts. They had surrounded her—perhaps from pure brute instinct, perhaps because they had planned to do so from the start. She was caught between them now: already she thought she could see the nearest, a wan, deathly shape only a little thicker than the mist, bobbing leglessly along the slope like a jellyfish in an ocean current, moving slowly but inexorably toward her. Her heart was thumping like a high-speed rhythm track.

  She realized she was clutching at the lighter and pulled it out of her thin garment. It was useless, but even so she was desperate to hear a voice, any voice. She suddenly couldn't imagine what danger she had thought so great that she had avoided using it before.

  "Hello, M–Martine, a–a–anyone?" Fear was taking her breath; she could barely speak. "Is someone listening? Please, answer me?" Silence—even the spectral searchers had fallen still. As she tried the command sequence again, all Renie could see was swirling mist, gray tree-shadows. "Martine? I heard you before—can you hear me now?"

  The voice that came back was diminished but surprisingly clear, so much so that Renie felt a moment of pointless hope, as though her friends might only be a few meters distant, might suddenly come rushing out of the fog to rescue her. "Renie? Is that you? Renie? We hear you. Talk to us."

  "Jesus Mercy," Renie said quietly. "It's you, Martine." She struggled for composure—it was almost certain her friends could do nothing for her now. She must tell them what she could, tell them what she had seen and experienced, "We never left the mountain," she began. "We woke up and you were gone. We're in what must be the White Ocean the others talked about. But I've lost !Xabbu and Sam and now I'm lost, too."

  ". . . Can't understand you very well," Martine replied. "Where are you exactly?"

  She was nowhere. She was in the realms of terror. She had to force herself to remember what she had thought about so long. "I think . . . oh, God, I think we're in the heart of the system." The tears started again. "But I'm in trouble—bad trouble. . . !"

  Something crackled in the branches behind her. Renie leaped in startled terror and dropped the lighter.

  Second:

  GHOST SONGS

  "Boys and girls come out to play.

  The moon is shining as bright as day.

  Leave your supper and leave your sleep,

  And join your playfellows in the street."

  —Traditional

  CHAPTER 11

  Yours Very Sincerely

  NETFEED/NEWS: Club Patrons Get Mother Goosed

  (visual: advertisement for Limousine)

  VO: Visitors to the virtual adults-only club Limousine got a surprise when service was interrupted for almost an hour by what some users suggest was a disguised or artificial voice reciting nursery rhymes.

  (visual: anonymated Limousine customer)

  CUSTOMER: "Yeah, it sounds funny, but really it was pretty gruesome. I mean, it didn't sound . . . normal."

  VO: Happy Juggler, the corporation that owns Limousine and several other online clubs, call it "just the most recent in a series of irritating pranks."

  (visual: Jean-Pierre Michaux, HJN Corporation spokesperson)

  MICHAUX: "It prevented us delivering service in our most productive time slots, and also, let's face it, half our users are fathers and even some mothers who've finally put the kids to bed and are hoping for a little diversion and relaxation. Nobody in that situation wants to have to sit and listen to more damn nursery rhymes."

  Jeremiah stacked the last vacuum bag and stood surveying his handiwork. It wasn't quite a kitchen—who was he fooling, it was nothing like a kitchen—but it would have to do. Piles of cans, boxes, and bags of rations, several plastic jugs of water, the single working portable halogen ring he'd salvaged from one of the upstairs common rooms, a kettle, and about three weeks' supply—if they were stingy with it—of perhaps the most precious commodity of all, instant coffee. Trapped in the underground base without any of the real stuff, he had long since taught himself to drink the self-heating swill without gagging, and had even begun to look forward to his morning cup. Now he was even more anxious to preserve a few last rituals of normality.

  He squinted at his makeshift larder, which filled most of an upright metal cabinet. All in all, it would serve. And if they were to be trapped down in this lowest level so long the coffee ran out, well, then perhaps the thugs upstairs wouldn't seem such a bad alternative.

  He couldn't even make himself smile. He checked the batteries in his flashlight, firmed up the corners of one of his stacks, and stood.

  Good Lord, I am a walking stereotype. Under siege, fighting for our lives, and who promptly takes over the kitchen as mother-elect?

  He made his way around the circular walkway to the control consoles where Del Ray sat frowning at the screen like a literary critic forced to review cheap genre fiction. Long Joseph lurked sullenly behind him, two squeeze bottles of wine sitting on the table. Jeremiah felt a moment of actual pity for the man. If Jeremiah himself was feeling miserable about having to ration several weeks' worth of coffee, imagine how Joseph must feel about having to make a day's worth or less of his usual poison last for God alone knew how long?

  "How is it going?" he asked.

  Del Ray shrugged. "I can't get the security monitors to work. They should, but they don't. I warned you, this is not really my area of expertise. How's your end?"

  "As good as it's going to get." Jeremiah pulled out one of the swivel chairs and sat down. "I wish we'd had that old fellow Singh get those cameras all running when we had the chance. But who knew we'd need them?"

  "Maybe your friend Sellars will call back," said Del Ray, but he didn't sound like he believed it. He pushed one of the buttons on the console, then gave it a frustrated whack. "Maybe he can do something about this disaster."

  "My Renie was here, she would have that wired up before you can jump and turn around," Long Joseph said suddenly. "She know all that stuff. Has a degree from the university and all."

  Del Ray glowered, but it quirked unexpectedly into a tiny smile. "Yes, she would. And she'd get a lot of pleasure cleaning up the mess I've made with it and telling me about it."

  "She would. She is one smart girl. Ought to be, with all that money for her education."

  Del Ray's smile widened a bit as he met Jeremiah's gaze. Education she paid for herself, if I remember correctly, Jeremiah thought. He remembered Renie talking about her years of bondage to the university dining hall.

  "Hang on a moment," he said, turning to Joseph. "Did I hear correctly? Were you bragging about Renie?"

  "What do you mean, bragging?" Joseph asked suspiciously.

  "I mean, acting like you're actually proud of her?"

  The older man scowled. "Proud of her? 'Course I am proud of her. She is a smart girl, like her mama was."

  Jeremiah almost shook his head in wonderment. He wondered if the man had ever said anything like that when Renie was around to hear it, instead of waiting until she was encased in plasmodal gel in the depths of a fibramic casket. Somehow he doubted it.

  "Damn." Del Ray pushed his chair back from the console. "I give up. I can't fix it. This waiting is making me crazy. I thought that at least if we could see what they're doing up there, instead of just sitting here. . . ."

  "You don't want all those cameras," Joseph growled. "That will do no good against bad men like those. I told you, we should be finding guns to shoot those piglockers with."

  Jeremiah grunted in exasperation. "There aren't any guns. You know that already. Nobody's going to decommission a military base and leave the guns lying around."

  Joseph hooked a thumb toward Del Ray, who was slumped in his chair, staring up at the ceiling of the vast underground chamber as though trying to do the work of the inactive monitors by himself. "He have a gun. I told you, you should give that gun to me. Y
ou didn't see him, waving it around, all in a fright, hand so sweaty I thought he might shoot my head off just by accident."

  "Not this again," Jeremiah moaned.

  "I'm just telling you! I don't think this mother's boy ever fired a gun at all! I was in the Defense Force, you know."

  "Oh, yes," said Del Ray, eyes still closed, "I'm sure you shot a lot of other people's chickens after you and your mates had downed a few." He rubbed at his face. "Even if it wasn't hand-coded for me, you'd be the last person I'd. . . . "

  The sudden silence was strange. Jeremiah was just about to ask Del Ray if he was all right when the young man abruptly sat upright in his chair, eyes wide.

  "Oh my God," he said. "Oh my God!"

  "What is it?" Jeremiah asked.

  "The gun!" Del Ray grabbed at his hair as though he would pull it from his scalp. "The gun! It's in my jacket pocket!"

  "So?"

  "I left it upstairs! When I was stacking water bottles yesterday. I was hot. I took the damn thing off, then when I got downstairs you asked me about the cameras, and . . . shit!" He stood up, his hand still on his head as though he was afraid it might otherwise tumble from his shoulders.

  "See. . . ?" Joseph began, unable to disguise his pleased tone, but Jeremiah rounded on him.

  "Don't say anything." He turned back to Del Ray. "Where is it? The kitchen?"

  Del Ray nodded miserably.

  "Do we really need it?" Jeremiah looked around. "I mean, once they are down here, is it any real use to us?"

  "Is it any real use?" Del Ray stared at him. "What if they get in here? Are we going to throw bags of flour at them? We need every advantage we have. I have to go get it."